Teaching artists host paint night at Black Flannel Brewing Co.
All photos by Noah Lafaso.
Chatting, eating, and sipping their drinks, diners at the Black Flannel Brewing Company wait for paint night to begin. Each faces an empty canvas. Above them are photos of a painting which the group will attempt to imitate: a chickadee perched on a snowy branch.
The Jan. 19 event is the third in a series of paint nights hosted by local artists Natasha Bogar and Kara Ware.
The two share a studio space in Bolton Valley where they sometimes hold private lessons.
“I was working at a restaurant in Stowe and her studio was right across the street. So, she said: ‘You want to come over to my studio?’ Then when she moved the studio to Bolton Valley I went with her, so, it’s been awesome,” Ware said.
“We’ve shared the space for about five years. She does silk screening and I do a lot of painting and stained glass,” Bogar said.
Both also have experience teaching in school settings. Ware teaches with Burlington City Arts, while Bogar is working on an artist-in-residency at the Smilie Memorial School in Bolton.
“I’ve always felt like art was integral to healthy communities,” Bogar said.
Ware, a bartender at the restaurant, was the first to reach out to Black Flannel and organize. Since then, paint nights have been hugely successful.
“In December we did a snowy road theme. There were a really good number of participants, sort of like a sell out,” Bogar said.
Today, the event hall is just as crowded. Nearly every seat, of the 20 or so there are, is taken. Instruction begins as Bogar takes up the microphone. Diners dip into their palettes and start to fill their canvases.
Among the crowd are a couple from Colchester. Sarah and Ken Lavallee sit across from each other, focused on their brushstrokes.
“We love Black Flannel. We got an email from them that said they were having this and I was like, oh, we’ve got to do this,” Sarah Lavallee said.
At another table, Essex resident Helen Jurnak sits with her sister-in-law and nephew.
“This is our second time coming to the paint thing,” Jurnak said.
Happy with how her last painting came out, Jurnak was excited to come back and try again. Attending has given Jurnak an opportunity to extend artistic hobbies that she’s adopted during the pandemic.
“With the pandemic and the shutdown, I’ve tried to do more artistic stuff. You know, paint by numbers. I painted rocks and that kind of thing for a while,” Jurnak said.
Future paint nights are already on Black Flannel’s schedule. Bogar and Ware will be back at the brewpub on Feb. 6 for another.
